Starpoet Newsletter Vol. IX, No. XXI

 
The Starpoet Newsletter
Volume IX, No. XXI

 

 

 

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson c. 2008 C. E.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Memorial Day and Rolling Thunder, hot dogs, hamburgers, and the American Flag.
Summer is only a breath away.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pamela Anderson and other famous mammals,
Caught up in the paparazzi contrapuntal conversation,
Splash themselves across countless magazines and television,

Selling photographs of both their weddings and their babies,
Until the only sound that remains after the ambulances go
Is the speculation in the press on the nature of the drug mix.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
May 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LJT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

by Major John McCrae, MD
Canadian Army
1915

 

 

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

C’mon over to my house,
I’m going to give you candy,
A plum and a cherry,
Bright constellations
Festooned with comets,
Smart golden ships
Whose holds are filled
With sex and imagination;
Worlds where women
Risk limb and life
Beside their men,
Beside their lovers,
Their children
And their families;
Planets where life
Watches the sunset
And two moons rise
Above a summer tide,
Where the air is still crystal
And earth a distant memory
Taught in second grade history books,
Honored with annual ceremonies
Of fading social relevance;
Lives where each breath
Is a calculated risk,
An unavoidable dare against
A universe uninterested whether
We breathe our last;
Where Lucy’s multi-worlded children,
Star tinged wanderers
In search of good bottom land,
Lay footprints in the ancient sands
Of unknown destiny,
And love is the bond that makes us Man,
One family, one race, one poet
Singing of our life along the shoreline.

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the reality of being a female mammal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My mamms have been grammed,
Left, right, and then sideways,
Squished like heavy hydrogen water balloons,
Pushed and prodded
Until they were positioned just so
By a strangely detached female technician
Whose hands excited me even less than my own.

 

If there were truly no difference
Between women and men
-- As gender theory would teach us --
Fairness would dictate a scrotumgram be given
To all those who are born vaginaless.

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
On the occasion of her annual mammogram
May 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a short fiction

by Lisa Jain Thompson

© Memorial Day 2008

 

 

 

Vietnam and Northern Virginia share a fondness for heat and humidity and the abundant thick growth that accompanies it.  Trees and vines are everywhere, the lush, vibrant undergrowth, dense and difficult if left unchecked.  Forest would rule the world if not for the efforts of man. 

 

 

 

Again.

 

Better than the enemy who put it there but still …

 

Forty years and more the war rages on.

 

Outside her window, the storm rages.  Another torrential spring rain too wet for the watershed to absorb. She can feel the humidity rising, taste it still in her blood.  The jungle’s hot breath sweating down her neck.  The echo of guns aimed in her direction, the sound of bullets even closer.

 

The plane, falling from the sky, shattered into bits and explosions, its mission done, its pieces scattered across the forest and the flames.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gunfire.

 

The enemy spreads out searching for her partner, the pilot who volunteered for a mission he was much too young for.

 

Her leg’s on fire, fragments from the fuselage or perhaps a bullet.

 

More guns.  Closer.

 

She hears voices.   Vietnamese.  Coming near.

 

Movement in the bushes, an American uniform moving away.  The Navy pilot. She stands, falls.  The bone shattered in a thigh.

 

Bullets hit a tree.  The pilot runs, thoughts of stealth giving way to desperation.  He sounds like a water buffalo in full flight.  The NVA turn, fire in the direction of the water buffalo.  Semi-automatic.

 

Once noticed, the hip aches.  She struggles into position, ignores the pain, crawls to the high ground where she can see the Vietnamese.

 

The leg is bleeding now.

 

She props herself up.  Listens for the sound of the pilot.   Then lays down suppressing fire until the pilot escapes, no longer within reach of the NVA. 

 

She continues shooting, killing three, possibly four Vietnamese before the NVA retreat. The leg continues to bleed until she applies her belt as makeshift tourniquet.  There is a six inch gash sliced into her left arm that she bandages.

 

She cannot stand.   She cannot walk.  She barely drags her body into the bushes when she hears the footsteps of the remaining NVA come searching.

 

Barely breathing, she watches Charlie pass three feet away.  Memorizes their faces.  The way they walk.  The sound of their voices.

 

She remains unnoticed.

 

After thirty minutes. she shoots morphine into her leg and begins the long crawl in the general direction of a firebase.  She remembers little of the next week until she arrives at the U. S. camp.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later, after her body heals, during a lull in activity between missions, she goes out after Charlie, the remaining NVA who failed to kill her.  She finds each one, cleanly dispatches them until no more remained, then returns to camp waiting for her next assignment.

 

Outside her window, the rain is letting up but the humidity remains. The thunder has passed, the lightning dulled, and the border collie is up on the bed beside her, no longer afraid once the boom-booms grew silent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My vaginal epithelia,
Once discovered by an investigator
After some murderous tryst,
Might present challenges
To even the best trace analysis
-- or not, depending on my mix.

 

No one has ever tested my nuclei,
Counted the X's and Y's,
In any event, my master switch
Was slow to pull the trigger;

 

Perhaps some mutatation of SYR
Got mangled in transcription
In a mishmash of cross-timing,
Placing body and mind
In unintentional opposition.

So here I am,
With tissue and cavity and secretion,
Leaving bits and pieces on latex protections,
Full of estrogen and chromosomes
And six inches or more of reception
-- A woman for all seasons of Grissom’s CSI.

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
May 2007

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-- Sue Margolis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Burma

 

The quayside in Laputta
Is surrounded by desolation,
The sky rains darkly
Over the low lying islands
Of the Irrawaddy delta
Where rice fields lately grew.

Lisa Jain Thompson
May 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

memorial day

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
May 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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